What holds the exhibition together is its concern with marginalised humans, sharply focussed on in Krishen Khanna's picture of police gesticulating beside an unknown person's body, while other street-people continue to play cards as if nothing had happened. A similar concern with street persons is reflected in Sunil Das' canvas, wherein the main figure has a disabled hand -- an ironic expression of joblessness that a large percentage of the marginalised face today.

K G Subramanyan, too, focusses on the histories of those whose existence is hardly acknowledged in an increasingly insensitive world where more people seem to know Britain as the venue of the World Cup rather than a country invading and dismembering one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movementtoday.

Everything has become a game, as we see from Jogen Choudhury's chess players, which remind one of Munshi Premchand's famous story of two potentates playing chess as the British take over Awadh. And indeed, the colonial experience is reflected in M F Husain's painting of the Raj series, etching out a vain set of eccentric men who might have been funny, had they not been responsible for the misery of so many now being short-changed again in the name of globalisation.

This exhibition features some of our best artists, including Ganesh Pyne, S H Raza, Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar and Shyamal Dutta Ray. It is one to read deeply, right down to the red road that runs like a ribbon through Padamsee's Metascape. It is an exhibition that reminds us that our real strength is our human resources. Let us hope that some of those pursuing a policy of minimising its importance with every passing year take the trouble to see this exhibition and learn from it.

--Suneet Chopra